Sabatier, Paul

Sabatier, Paul, 1854–1941, French organic chemist, D.Sc. Collège de France, 1880. He joined the faculty at the Univ. of Toulouse in 1882 and taught there until he retired in 1930. Sabatier was a corecipient of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Victor Grignard for his method of hydrogenating organic compounds in the presence of finely disintegrated metals, particularly nickel. His work in catalysis laid the groundwork for a number of laboratory syntheses and also led to the development of margarine, hydrogenated oils, and synthetic methanol.